I had a very vivid lucid dream last night with FULL AWARENESS (not too common for me) and truly felt like I was somewhere else. I met a few interesting Dream Characters I would like to share.....

I became lucid outdoors, in a yard I don't recognize and I entered the house which was also unfamiliar. It was devoid of inhabitants, but I called out, "Is anybody here?" And then I saw a small, brown and white cat on a table. It was not a kitten, just a small cat (fully mature) and it said, (before I even spoke to it, it initiated the conversation), and it said, "Hi, Michael!", as if it knew me already (my real name is Michael. No surprise HAGART is not my god-given or mother-given name ). I said, "Wow! It's been a while since I spoke with an animal before." It was so second nature to me at the time even though it has been a month since my last 'Really Vivid Lucid Dream' (some call astral projection, but regardless of the name there is a difference.)

Anyway, I had the feeling that this cat was a wise, sage, type character, and I asked the cat what it's name was and it responded something like, "Meow-gnun Beefy". I thought it was funny and asked to clarify, "Is your name, Magnum Beefy?" He said, "Yes." I asked if he was a real being communicating on the 'astral plane' (something I am skeptical about). Then he got frantic and started moving around the table rapidly and even batted at my hand. He was such a small little thing, about the size of my fist.

Some other, irrelevant, interesting things happened in the dream, but this cat character didn't speak anything else, and later I asked some other people in the dream if they knew who Magnum Beefy was. One person said no. The next also said no at first as if it was a big secret, but finally divulged that he was "sixteen light years away", then the person said he was "sixteen steps away." (Meaning 1600 steps higher than my current level of lucid dreaming). (Whatever that means....)

Then soon after, I decided I had had enough and the dream would probably end soon anyway, so I decided to wake up so I can write it down with accuracy. I told the dream characters that I would be leaving soon. One woman said to me, "I thank others in the dream often, but I have never thanked you before. Thank you for creating me and this world." I asked, "You mean, when I leave you will die?" I opened the door to the house, and one of her two children about 12 years old (which just appeared as this was happening) was in the way of the door to the outside (outside = waking life as I thought at the time) and he disappeared as the door passed him. His brother was very distraught as if he just witnessed the death of his beloved younger brother. I looked at the woman and fixated on her eyes, closed mine to see black and opened them again to see if she was still there. She was. The dream is quite stable and she still exists. Then I walked outside and closed the screen door, which is translucent and kept my eye on her the whole time. As soon as it closed, many other dream characters materialized inside the house and they were all old. I opened the door to see if she was still the same. Her head was facing back to me and she was walking away. When I finally caught up, she turned to face me and she was a different, older person and very depressed. I felt so emotional and sad. It was so poignant.

It was as though they truly felt they were alive, and I killed them just by changing the dream scene which annihilates them.

I looked up Magnum and Beefy in a dictionary and it is uncanny how they are very similar. These are two words I don't use in waking life and am still shocked that I heard them. I thought Magnum was a weapon of choice used by Private Investigators with mustaches! But apparently:MAGNUM - a thing of a type that is larger than normalBEEFY - large and impressively powerful

Which is funny because the cat was so small. It must have been dealing with size issues I recon now that I am awake and looking back.... I can't believe I can make all this up and am surprised my mind did that. Or IS there consciousness streaming from an astral plane? I asked it, but it didn't answer. But I still find it hard to make all this stuff up! I am amazed by it.

Regardless of whether I feel it is all in my head or not, it was truly 'other worldly' and that is the only way to describe it. My words can never give it the justice it deserves. The feeling is ineffable.

I've also had some really interesting conversations with animals, very intense and surprising. Made me think differently about them. Right before I had my first one remember thinking about how animals don't have consciousness.

It's very amazing, the intensly real things that we create in dreams and sometimes they say really surprising and interesting things.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus

Cats are a great animal, companions of sorcerers and Egyptians alike. It sounds like an amazing and powerful dream, and I wouldn't worry too much about the skepticism.Personally, I believe all dreaming takes place in the 4th dimension, but wherever it takes place, the experiences are amazing and beautiful. This LD is a good example of a great LD in my opinion!

Love your dream Hagart! It does seem significant and powerful. I love cats. I love animals. I always feel that it only reflects our own limitations that we ( humans) think their lives are somehow less than ours. The emotions of the woman, and the sense of a world created and destroyed, is really thought provoking. I need to think about this. The idea of the world we create in our dreams. It makes me wonder about the Hindu notion of our waking reality as 'maya' and our own clinging to it. I'm not sure what I'm saying, but so many ideas and thoughts are certainly provoked by your dream story.

The key to creativity is to remove the watchers from the gates, and realize how free you really are.

I've had a lucid dream every night since this, but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. I wasn't fully alert and 'myself'. What makes a dream like this different than other lucid dreams, was the fact that, not only was I fully lucid in thought, and felt like 'me', but I had an internal dialogue with myself the way we all do when awake, while it was happening. In other words, I thought before I spoke, made remarks to myself 'in my head' and even thought about how I would tell this story here on this very site as it was happening, independent of things going on around me. When you are fully lucid you have your complete rational thought, internal dialogue and memories all in tact. I'm still amazed our minds can do that!

And now I know where the woman and children dieing from the dream ending came from. It happened from a thought I had earlier in the day before that dream. I was reading some posts on here earlier that day, and it was in the topic "DO you kill dream characters?" and Peter mentioned that whenever a scene changes the characters die (for all intense and purposes). I wasn't aware of that at the time, but it was on my recent subconscious mind from earlier that day and I am sure that is were it came from. I just played it out as a vivid dream scene. So in a way, we do kill off entire worlds and populations in a dream if we change the scene/ or wake up, don't we? I just never had an extremely close heart to heart with a dream character when it was actually happening before. And it only happened because I was paying attention and perhaps that is what I subconsciously expected.

But regardless of any interpretation I have, it was like a memory no different than any waking one. And if you are defined by your life experiences than this one has to be included in mine whether 'real' or not. It's a part of who I am now......

I'll just add something about cats and animals which was brought up a few times, so I can't quote one person in particular.

I've had a few cats in my lucid experiences and for some reason they always seem so wise. Even in real waking life, they are regarded as mystical at times. I've had pet cats in my life and they were always like confidants to me, more so than fellow humans at times. (I'm not a recluse, nor a 'cat lady', but I think we can all agree that we can be ourselves around animals without fear of judgment and it is so liberating.)

I've also joked with myself before that cat's are probably the best lucid dreamers and have mastered it. That's why they sleep all day!

AND my view of cats (or all animals) is as if they are humans trapped in an animal body. That means they have that particular animal's mind as well and behave as such, but deep down I see no discrimination between humans and other animals when it comes to the 'entity' within. We are all the same thing, just existing in different ways. And even being a 'human' doesn't mean we are all that great or better than anything else that survives on this planet.

(Let this go off tangent if it has to. Perhaps that is what Magnum Beefy wants! but serious )

HAGART wrote:What makes a dream like this different than other lucid dreams, was the fact that, not only was I fully lucid in thought, and felt like 'me', but I had an internal dialogue with myself the way we all do when awake, while it was happening. In other words, I thought before I spoke, made remarks to myself 'in my head' and even thought about how I would tell this story here on this very site as it was happening, independent of things going on around me. When you are fully lucid you have your complete rational thought, internal dialogue and memories all in tact. I'm still amazed our minds can do that!

I have an 'internal dialogue' when I lucid dream; I think this is being fully lucid alright. I am aware of my emotions and my memories. I've also found that I have 'dream life' memories; memories of previous dreams that I recall As I'm dreaming the new dream. One thing I've never done though, is recall, or think about the fact that my 'real body' is asleep in bed. I want to try to do that yet.

As to your dream character's emotions: I think they were an expression of seeds of your own subconscious thoughts or feelings about it ( externalized by giving these thoughts a voice and a face in your dream); sort of similar as to how the mask in ancient rituals give a face and a voice to the unseen and intangible. (Like Picasso's painting Les Demoiselle d'Avignon where he uses harsh frightening 'mask' like abstractions on the faces of the women 'ladies of the night'; he borrowed from the idea of the primitive mask's role as a means of expressing the internal and unseen).Does that make sense? Fleeting thoughts, emotions, and subconscious feelings, are given a face and a voice that are reflected back to you as your dream characters ( as if a mirror) so that you can know them (know yourself).

The key to creativity is to remove the watchers from the gates, and realize how free you really are.